What role does BYOD have to play in mobilizing your workforce? And how do you develop the guidelines and security protocols that will keep your most sensitive company data safe and secure in this new and inherently less-secure environment? These are questions that CIO’s, IT administrators and others in the enterprise with a stake in their organization’s security and workforce needs and requirements are actively grappling with today.

Spurred by the boom in smartphone adoption and usage, as well as the growth of enterprise mobile applications and their employees’ desire to use the device of their choosing to stay connected, BYOD has become a fact of life and no longer a question of, “Should we, or shouldn’t we?”. So now rather than weighing the potential benefits vs. drawbacks of BYOD, it is a question of what policies to put in place, how to ensure that employees are following those policies and that your organization is getting the desired benefits of increased mobility.

With regards to one of the more common and essential functions of enterprise mobility – file sharing – a recent study by a leading provider of workforce collaboration applications found that while mobile file sharing was being widely used by workers in the sensitive legal and finance departments of major U.S. corporations, only a third of them were using file-sharing apps that had been expressly approved by their IT departments. If that isn’t enough to keep CIOs up at night, then consider trying to keep track of the dizzying range of mobile apps coming onto the market every day, some of which are enterprise-ready, some of which are decidedly not.

But there are some BYOD developments and trends that should provide IT leaders with a little peace of mind. For instance, Google’s recently-announced launch of a new suite of BYOD features for Android devices that will allow for greater security and control over employee-owned devices. Also heartening is the increasing acceptance of the indispensable role of proper testing, monitoring and consistent QA procedures by makers of enterprise mobile apps.

So rather than resist the BYOD trend, it would be wise for IT decision-makers to try to get out in front of it and put the right policies and tools in place for their increasingly mobile workforce before any lasting damage can be done. As enterprise mobile guru Cesare Garlati recently stated in a blog post:

“My advice for organizations facing an increasingly consumerized IT world is to realize that Consumerization [BYOD] is happening and they can’t stop it – and in fact they shouldn’t. Embrace consumerization is the optimal approach: create a plan that spans the whole organization, say yes but not for everything to everyone and put the right new infrastructure in place to secure and manage consumer-grade technology in the enterprise. Rather than resist it, organizations should embrace Consumerization to unlock its business potential.”

We have long thought that this would come eventually. Mobile testing has been focused on mobile devices such as smartphones. But within the last year we have been seeing from our own customers a demand for tablet testing as well including the iPad and Android tablet devices. This has been recently supported by a survey released by IDC and Appcelerator. In it they say “over the next six months, nearly an equivalent percentage of mobile app developers expect to build for tablets as for smartphones: 81.34 percent vs. 84 percent, respectively. Since 2010, the number of developers focusing on enterprise apps has jumped from 38 percent to 51 percent, and the figure is further expected to rise as high as 63 percent by the end of the year.

These latest numbers come from a study conducted in April 2013, in which Appcelerator and IDC surveyed 6,046 Appcelerator Titanium developers. The duo claims this is the world’s largest survey of mobile app developers to date.

The two firms now have three years of survey data to work with, letting them discover some interesting trends supporting the mobile revolution. The fact tablet development has now caught up to smartphone development is noteworthy, as is the increasing focus on the enterprise, but one trend that hasn’t changed is developers’ interest in building for multiple operating systems.”

Recently Chris Marsh of Yankee Gropu wrote a great article on the explosion within enterprises to develop and support apps that enable their employees to be more effective and give them the ability to utilize the tools their used to using in their own personal lives. He writes” Employees are spending increasing amounts of time away from their primary workspace and understandably want access to technologies that help them remain productive. The benefit is clear - Yankee Group’s “Enterprise Mobility: Empowered Employee” June survey shows that employees’ self-stated productivity can increase by as much as 40% percent when they are provisioned with mobile devices.

Employees Push; IT Adjusts
While many employers are struggling to manage this technology shift, employees push on regardless. With the growing ubiquity in mobile computing power in their everyday lives, employees are resorting to using a variety of consumer tools and technologies for work purposes. Our surveys show that:

20% of all employees use consumer IM services for work using their smartphone

14% use social networks

8% use consumer web-based productivity tools for work

56% use or would be interested in using consumer productivity apps for work

16% do so even knowing their IT department’s policy is to prohibit their usage.

One-third believe they would be more productive at work if they had access to the tools they use in their private lives.

The main reasons why employees resort to their consumer applications is simply familiarity with them from their personal lives, the absence of an alternative provided by and the fact that they are more likely to be updated regularly than work-provided equivalents.

This flood of consumer technologies into the workplace and workflows is compelling them to revise their policies about what devices and technologies are and are not sanctioned in the workplace. This trend shows no signs of slowing down.

Over the past two years IT’s attitude has been forced to adapt. For example, in 2011 33% of organizations said that non-sanctioned apps and devices are absolutely not tolerated and immediately blocked or removed; today that number is only 13%.

In fact, 29% of companies said they allow employees to use any non-harmful app or device AND they provide some support, as opposed to 17% in 2011.

The pace of change of consumerization seems irresistible, but IT departments need to clearly understand the consequences of adopting a permissive policy, as this will open the floodgates to mass usage. Explicitly allowing employees to use consumer tools increases usage from 16% to 64% — a four-fold jump.”

It should come as no surprise to find out how much more complicated testing an app on a mobile device is than on a desktop. Desktop apps can be complicated sometimes, but typically they are fairly straight forward. This is due to several factors. First, desktops typically have a consistent screen size – this has become a non-issue when developing a desktop application. You only have to worry about one screen that is typically the same size or close the same size. Second, the desktop PC market has been dominated by a very limited set of OSes – specifically Windows, Mac, and Linux. Other vendors have attempted to make inroads into this market, to no avail.

Whereas on mobile, it is 10 times more complicated. You have different OSes including iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and now Mozilla. Plus you have different screen sizes that must be considered from 3.4” all the way up to 19” or even 47” if you include TV with apps support such as the latest Samsung TV’s.

Jason Tee of TheServerSide.com recently discussed this topic in a blog post. He states that “It's not an exaggeration to say that testing is the number one area where mobile ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) is several orders of magnitude more complex than traditional ALM. The recent Mobile Application Development Primer whitepaper from IBM describes just a few of the factors that come into play. "The same model of device may function in a subtly different way when connected to a different carrier network. Also, the quality of the network connection can have a profound impact on the behavior of a mobile application. Even the movement of the mobile device itself may be an important factor in the behavior of the application."

This means the enterprise must be prepared to use every trick in the book including simulators, emulators, device-cloud testing with hardware, and/or automated testing made available as a resource on a consumption based billing model.”

Tools like these make it easier to perform any test of any mobile app, and to do it from anywhere in the world. It is why testing on mobile apps has become such a critical part of any app development process. And it is why we are starting to see many enterprise Fortune 2000 organizations develop their apps with a ‘mobile first’ strategy. We will cover this strategy in a future post.

Welcome to part 4 of a 4 part series on Android fragmentation. In a recent article in ‘Search Consumerization’, Margaret Jones covered this issue and how it has really become a major challenge for anyone developing apps or websites for the mobile platform. This final post focuses on the future of Android fragmentation. As we mentioned in the first article, we see little to no sign of any consolidation in the marketplace. If anything, and particularly around Android, we only see growth times ten. Moreover, the pace at which consumers with Android devices are not upgrading their OS as quickly as iOS owners. This presents a problem requiring one to support both current and previous versions.

Ms Jones supports this point by saying that “unfortunately, it looks like fragmentation will be a problem for IT (and developers/QA teams) over the long haul. Device manufacturers would rather focus on bringing in new customers with the latest version of Android than spending the necessary time and money building OS updates for older devices. That means anyone locked into a wireless contract with a device running an older Android OS version is pretty much stuck with it. Additionally, the fragmentation that comes from vendor-specific modifications to the Android OS isn't going away anytime soon. Samsung, HTC and other original equipment manufacturers use the modifications to the Android OS to set themselves apart from other Android devices.”

Regardless of what organization you work in (IT, Development, or QA), we recommend that you pick a targeted list of devices that will give you the maximum market exposure, in the country you live or where you are going to launch your app.

In conclusion, as Android fragmentation continues it has become that much more critical to test, test, and test some more regardless of what you are deploying or supporting. If its on a mobile device you run the risk of mediocre quality and therefore low usage and return on what is typically an expensive investment to begin with. Thanks for reading!

Welcome to part 3 of a 4 part series on Android fragmentation. In a recent article in ‘Search Consumerization’, Margaret Jones covered this issue and how it has really become a major challenge for anyone developing apps or websites for the mobile platform. Developers and QA teams have had to purchase hundreds of devices to perform localized testing on a real device to see how it would perform. While it can be useful if you have just a few, it can certainly drive up cost as well as drive down efficiency as you are having to ship devices around the world to a variety of teams who need to test. Since the introduction of remote, cloud-based testing platforms such as DeviceAnywhere, for example companies are able to test their apps and websites from anywhere in the world on any device, as a means of ensuring its success in the real world. And while that can’t ever be 100% guaranteed because of the carriers involvement, it certainly can be mitigated.

For IT departments the BYOD issue as well as supporting workforce apps (such as ERP, timecard, or other internal based app) can even be a bigger challenge. So, what can IT teams do to minimize this problem? Ms. Jones gives us some good insight. She says “There are some -- but not many -- ways IT can deal with Android fragmentation. Some companies choose to buy devices for users, which will ensure those devices all run the same Android OS version. But manufacturers don't keep up with OS updates, so whichever version of Android is on the devices the company buys will become out of date as soon as the new version of Android becomes available. In that situation, replacing devices when they get old or deploying new ones to new employees will eventually become a problem.

In bring-your-own-device scenarios, IT can set a baseline for which Android OS versions users can bring to work. Most Android devices run version 2.3 or higher, so that's a good place to start. Some IT departments have chosen not to allow Android devices at all, which helps to avoid fragmentation headaches altogether, but doesn't necessarily appease employees.”

To read more follow our blog and catch our next installment as we continue this conversation in a 4 part series.

Welcome to part 2 of a 4 part series on Android fragmentation. In a recent article in ‘Search Consumerization’, Margaret Jones covered this issue and how it has really become a major challenge for anyone developing apps or websites for the mobile platform. As Android continues to dominate worldwide, this has developers and QA teams alike pulling their hair out trying to contain the problem while attempting to develop for mobile devices with the highest level of quality, ensuring the highest possible success in the market for their app or service.

As it relates to IT organizations, Jones comments in her article saying that “because the Android OS is so fragmented, enterprise IT can't standardize on one Android OS version, which makes supporting devices a nightmare. Each operating system version and device has different features, so some Android OS versions come with more management features than others. Early versions of the OS don't have as many management hooks for IT, but those versions are still in use and are in the enterprise, so IT has to find ways to manage them. For many companies, that means finding a mobile device management tool that can control a wide variety of Android OS versions, plus the other mobile OSes that are accessing the corporate network, but performing that task is easier said than done.”

To read more follow our blog and catch our next installment as we continue this conversation in a 4 part series.

In a recent article in ‘Search Consumerization’, Margaret Jones gives a great description for those unfamiliar with device fragmentation and why it exists. She also covers why it has become a headache for IT organizations in addition to mobile app developers and QA managers to support.

As the market continues to grow and the number of devices continues to escalate, especially on the Android iOS, we see no sign of letting up or consolidation.

To begin, we must first understand what fragmentation is and why it is important when supporting the Android marketplace. In the article Jones writes “a mobile operating system becomes fragmented when there are several different OS versions in use at the same time. Fragmentation is usually associated with Android because wireless carriers and device manufacturers, not OS developers, are the ones who control when OS updates are sent out to different devices.”

While Apple is in control of the updates of their OS, there is still a level of fragmentation based on screen sizes (i.e. iPad, iPad mini, iPhone, and coming soon, the iWatch).

Jones continues “additionally, fragmentation is the result of different device manufacturers adapting a mobile OS for their own devices, as is the case with Android. For example, the version of Android that runs on some Samsung devices has been modified to work closely with Samsung's hardware. It is not the same version of Android that runs on other manufacturer's devices, even if the name of the OS version is the same.”

To read more follow our blog and catch our next installment as we continue this conversation in a 4 part series.

Recently Mozilla announced its intent to build their own OS built on the Firefox browser. This, in theory is intended to give a standards-based framework for simplifying mobile app development and providing a strong platform for HML5 web-based mobile app development. In a recent article on this topic, the author writes "Currently, if you develop an app for Firefox OS then you can run it under the Firefox browser as well. The same is true of a Chrome app but these two forms of app are not compatible. You have to do some work to convert a Chrome app to a Firefox app. It is true that most of the work is in creating a suitable manifest and in packaging the app. You could say that this is an almost trivial difference but there are deeper reasons to suppose that this division might get worse.

At the moment we have the two browsers competing for your apps and the competition is frankly a bit weak. Despite the amazing Firefox demos and Chrome experiments, the world doesn't seem to be falling over itself to create packaged apps for either browser. Indeed there seems to be a big preference for creating pure HTML5 apps that run on either browser without modification.

If you want to target a mobile device then you need to use something that augments the basic HTML5 and JavaScript so that you can access the native hardware - accelerometers, camera, dialer etc. What this means is that this particular route to web based mobile apps isn't 100% pure. Frameworks like Cordova are great but you can't really claim to be writing HTML5 web apps.

This is all about to change.

Firefox OS is the browser based operating system that will give you access ot the mobile hardware without an additional framework. What this means is that you can write a "native" phone app using nothing but HTM5, CSS and JavaScript. The same app will run in a desktop browser if you allow for the lack of hardware. It all sounds great and this is what Mozilla is getting at when it says that Firefox OS is the platform HTML5 deserves.

Firefox OS is open and free to all. The only restrictions on the programmer are those imposed by the security mechanisms. If you want to see what Mozilla think about their creation take a look at the this video.

So Firefox OS is the platform HTML5 deserves.

Only there is a small problem.

To make this all work Mozilla is having to invent, at incredible speed, a complete set of web APIs which give access to the phone's hardware. These APIs are not standards, even though Mozilla hopes that they will be standards and has submitted them to W3C. If you want to see how fast Mozilla is innovating take a look at WebAPI and take special note of the implementation and standardization status columns.

At the moment Google seems to not be reacting to the rapid change. If you think about it for a moment this seems reasonable as Google already has a mobile operating system in the form of Android - and very successful it is. Why should Google incorporate WebAPIs such as the Camera API? It isn't a standard and in any case Chrome desktop generally doesn't have access to a digital camera. Chrome running on Android is a different matter, but why would Google go to the trouble of adding a feature which would undermine the Android app marketplace?

It is possible that Chrome will add a Camera API and any others that manage to become standardized, but Google's app extensions for Chrome are oriented to making Chrome OS a viable portable operating system not a phone operating system.

None of this looks as if it is going to be a revolution, until you take note of how the device manufacturers are behaving. They have been showing a lot of interest in Firefox OS. The latest news is that Foxconn, the manufacturer of the iPhone is hiring an additional 3000 programmer to work on Firefox OS. It seems that Foxconn sees Firefox OS as a way to make it less reliant on Apple's fortunes.

At the moment developers seem to be ignoring Firefox OS and there are few apps in marketplace. However, this is not taking into account the current state of the Firefox OS development environment. There is a simulator and Geeksphone has provided a developer preview phone, but when you actually attempt to begin work on app that is making use of the web APIs that Mozilla are working on you quickly find that they are not ready to be used. There is little documentation and much of the framework is marked "experimental". It isn't surprising that there are few finished apps on the shelves - there isn't yet a finished OS to program to!

So the question is, what happens to the idea that web apps are universal and can work anywhere?

Given the rate that Mozilla is inventing new web APIs this idea is more or less dead, for the moment at least. It is not the case that you can sit down and develop a web app and expect it to work on Firefox desktop, mobile and OS, let alone Chrome and Chrome OS and as to IE... forget it.

Any programmer wanting to create apps that run under Firefox OS might as well realize that this is a new platform that just happens to use HTML and JavaScript. You code for the Firefox OS, not the browser.

It is true that this could change.

All of the Mozilla web APIs could become standards and in an ideal world Google, Microsoft and Apple might just make their browsers support these standards - but it is difficult to believe in a world where this might happen. There are simply too many proprietary interests at stake. Microsoft needs to keep WinRT special, Apple would lose control of its walled garden and app store and Google would see Android decline in popularity. Only Mozilla has anything to gain from the standardization of the WebAPIs."

While the DeviceAnywhere platform continues to stay agnostic, this will no doubt add fuel to the fire over how and what to develop. With any OS, the problem remains - app quality is often overlooked and customer ratings are still king. Therefore, no matter what OS you develop on, testing is critical to its success in the real world.

Recently there was an article which reinforced many of the same issues that mobile app developers and QA teams are running into during development and post-release. They include such things as device diversity, OS diversity, and even organizational diversity, especially prevalant in enterprise organizations. One key struggle was the "tedious process" of manually testing each and every device, from phones to tablets. If you add in the number of test cases that have to be created to support the volume of devices you want them to run on, it can create very daunting task.

In the article the author writes "Manual testing (for mobile) can be a tedious process that involves many man-hours to be quite expensive. It can also lead to errors, because of the human trials. However, manual testing serves an important purpose because it provides a method to receive valuable information about the usability of the application. For mobile applications, the usefulness is a very important factor. In fact, in many applications the use of the only unique selling proposition (USP). That’s what happened, it is very difficult to imagine how easy it is for them, if people do not interact with it on a real mobile device.

Continuous testing of mobile applications - How you can ensure continuous testing while developing mobile applications How do you ensure that updates and upgrades work correctly answer is fingers and eyes! Many mobile devices and applications that can not be avoided for the fingers and the eyes of the method is the only way to test the application, at least in this situation. Manual testing should be performed in the cycle before it begins and life after the release of the application. Despite the advantages smells, manual testing can also be disrupted by the following reasons: Drastically slow down the development process and it leaves a wide margin for error."

Hence, the need for automation. This provides the ability to remotely automate your test cases on mobile devices, from anywhere in the world. This advanced "scripting" and "recording" technology finally provides the tools necessary for efficient mobile testing. Supplemented with manual testing on new devices, it can provide the perfect balance between efficiency and optimization to ensure the highest quality of any mobile app or website. To read more about automating your mobile testing, check out this link!